Incredibly Premature NBA Storylines: Now is the time for Kevin Durant to be talked about as one of the best in the NBA

The NBA season is far away, but there are still plenty of intriguing storylines for next season. Each week, we'll do a little wild speculation on what those will be.

Although separate entities, it sometimes feels as if the NBA, more than any other sport, is intrinsically tied to its player sponsorship - blurring the line where Nike ends and the league begins.

From LeBron's chalk throw to his Game 5 performance against the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals a couple seasons ago, happenings on the court are immediately branded by an outside entity. It's an overlapping relationship where the individual and his accomplishments belong to the brand but the game in its entirety belongs to the league. It's symbiosis - resulting in an ambient product.

Both Nike and the NBA has invested oodles of money into the natural hierarchy of Kobe --> LeBron. The longer Kobe keeps winning and LeBron doesn't, the better it is for the hype machine. LeBron's road to a championship is inevitable but each year he doesn't make it, is another year Kobe can be the face of the league. In the short-term, LeBron's failures are more valuable than his successes. But what if both vested parties got it wrong? What if the divine NBA family tree linking 24 to 23 is a heresy and the false prophet is Kevin Durant?

Far from the concrete jungle that is NYC, the lakes around Chicago, the mountains of Utah, beaches of Miami and any other geographical or cultural significance, Durant rests in the barren landscape of Oklahoma City (only 100 miles from yours truly) -- forgotten by the NBA and individual endorsements (Being in a commercial with Rashard and Mo Williams barely counts).

Unlike the other superstars in the league, Durant has organically grown into the 25 points/game beast he is. Both Kobe and Wade came into the league with the benefit of Shaq around them early, and LeBron got drafted onto a misfit Cleveland team where he had no choice but to be the best player

General Manger Sam Presti had a choice when he drafted Durant onto a Seattle team that held the rights for Rashard Lewis and still (for a second) had Ray Allen. He could assimilate him into the current team, instantly making the Sonics playoff contenders for years to come or strip the team naked and give his superstar space to grow.

The first option would eerily mimic Carmelo Anthony's foray into the league. College superstar, landing on a team with veterans (Andre Miller, Kenyon Martin) that is good enough to make the playoffs every year. Given Melo's comfortable circumstances, it's possible that his growth was stifled because the team was never built around him, he was a new face on an old regime. Melo isn't the same player that LeBron and Wade are because he has never had to accept the monolithic responsibility of owning a team. Miller, Iverson and now Billups might have indirectly prevented Melo from becoming the franchise player that he was expected to be out of Syracuse by cushioning his failures with a shoulder to share responsibility with.

Presti didn't take a chance with the Melo scenario. By trading Allen on draft night and gladly discarding Rashard and his absurd price tag, he anointed Durant as the franchise on draft day and got him a running mate in Jeff Green -- allowing them to both grow together in MJ/Pippen fashion.

Jordan and Pippen were drafted three years apart and grew to complement each other. Durant and Green happened just three picks apart, pre-determined to complete each other (a second half that LeBron is still waiting for).

The conditions that groomed Durant have been rational, methodical, well-planned and leading to natural ascension to something special -- a prelude to a dynasty that lurks in the distance without an approximate arrival time.

(Sidenote: The closest thing to Durant/Green was Carter/McGrady in Toronto. Together they would have been unstoppable but apart they have amounted to nothing but ridicule, disappointment and embarrassment.)

The question then is: Given the parameters around the two, can Durant be better than LeBron?